The Slower Path
by EachPeachPearPlum
Summary: Steve gets his dance. (Endgame spoilers)


**Notes**

Mostly, oh my god.

That said, I was talking to a friend about how Steve would never end up in the same time he left because there is no way in hell he wouldn't try save everyone along the way. Then I had an hour long drive to my parents' house, and suddenly there was the entire freaking story in my brain, just waiting to be on paper. This is the first of three fics telling this story, of which all of the final one and approximately 6k of the middle one are written.

Title from the Doctor Who episode _The Girl in the Fireplace_, because I think it's pretty fitting.

Can't find Peggy on the characters for Avengers, is this because ff.n are hugely wrong or am I just doing a terrible job of looking?

(And it's not like I'm begging for affection, but reviews equal love and that's something the world always needs more of and, okay, yeah, I'm totally begging. Please love me?)

**The Slower Path**

Steve isn't late.

He knows it's foolish, that Peggy is far too practical to be waiting for him at a date they both knew he was never going to make it to, but the alternative is marching into Lehigh and demanding to know where Agent Carter is and Steve doesn't want to deal with that. He doesn't want to fight to make people believe he is who he says he, doesn't want to answer the endless barrage of questions he knows he'll get.

He's just helped save the goddamn universe. He deserves his dance.

He's not late. Time travel, turns out he can get there whenever the hell he wants to.

(He's been here since six. Even with time on his side, it never hurts to be early.)

There are problems with travelling back to 1945 that Steve never actually thought about. He has no money on him, and the only clothes he owns are what he's wearing; everything in storage from before Rebirth would be tiny on him, and anything he owned after that is over in Europe with his squad.

So by the time their date rolls around, he's been waiting for two hours, dressed as the American flag and without a cent to his name to buy himself a drink and maybe make himself a little less conspicuous.

Seventy-eight years from now, Sam is laughing at him, Steve just knows it.

The bartender's been throwing him filthy looks for the last hour and fifty-seven minutes, and Steve's perfectly aware it's only his size that keeps him from getting thrown out on his ass. He can't even blame him, not when he knows what he looks like: a perfectly healthy man, in New York rather than at the Western Front serving his country, parading around dressed as Captain America only days after the man's death, and to add insult to injury he's not even bought a drink.

Hell, Bucky's probably laughing at him, too.

It's eight-oh-five, and Steve's readying himself to come up with a plan B better than the one he's already got when the door opens and-

She's wearing the dress he remembers from the bar in England, the red one that had Bucky barely waiting until she was gone to tease Steve about his eyes bugging out of his head. Her hair's perfectly curled, her lipstick just as striking and just as precise as it always is, and she's been crying.

"This is ridiculous, Howard," she's saying, that practicality Steve loves so much. "We both know he's gone."

For a moment, Steve is as frozen in his place in a corner as this year's him is frozen in the Arctic, unable to take his eyes off them, unable to move, barely even managing to breathe.

Howard's eyes are red-rimmed, too, Steve notices, in one of the tiny fractions of a second all his attention isn't taken up by Peggy. Somehow, it's less surprising that he's been crying over Steve than it is that Peggy has; this era is a man's world, far more than the twenty-first century was – will be? – and even in the future women still have to hide their emotions to be taken seriously.

Howard doesn't answer her, just gives a little shake of his head and walks towards the bar, his ego parting the crowd the same way Moses did the Red Sea, Peggy following in his wake.

It's this fact that thaws Steve, gets him away from the wall and barrelling through people to get to them: Peggy was not born to do anything other than lead.

"Actually," Steve says, tripping over his own feet as he comes to a standstill beside her.

Peggy looks at him, so much wonder and disbelief that Steve's tongue tangles itself over anything else he'd thought of saying. He's loved her for two years before and twelve years after and he's pretty sure he loved her all those sixty-six years in between. He's dreamed this moment a thousand times over, and never once did he imagine she'd look at him like this.

Even after everything, he's still that little guy from Brooklyn, picking fights he can't win, pushing himself back to his feet long past the point where anyone sensible would have given up, because if there's one thing the world knows about Steve Rogers, it's this: he has never known how to stay down.

He's still that little guy, and maybe he's one of the future's heroes but Margaret Elizabeth Carter has always been his.

Steve never stood a chance of not blushing when she's looking at him like that.

"How?" she asks, faintly, her right hand rising to rest on his chest, right where Steve can feel his heart trying to break out of his chest.

"It's kind of a long story," he manages. "You won't believe almost all of it and, if it's alright with you, I'd rather have that dance instead?"

X

(He treads on her toes, more than once.

When the song ends and Steve tries and fails not to be mortified by his lack of skill, Peggy laughs, small and quiet. "Well," she says, as gracious as she's even been, "I can't say you didn't warn me.")


End file.
